Red tape catches up with pancake racers

Red tape has ended the annual pancake race in the North Yorkshire city of Ripon. Health and safety, child protection and insurance rules have gradually diminished the supply of volunteers in the cathedral city, where the messy event traditionally takes over the streets on Shrove Tuesday.

"Finding volunteers to man the event on the day has just got too difficult," said Bernard Bateman of Ripon town council, which co-organised the race with the Cathedral hierarchy. "We have had plenty of people wanting to take part, but no longer enough to organise them."

The race, which sees a team of choristers and often portly clerics take on the pride of the town's school and businesses, goes back - with regular interruptions - to pre-medieval times. Its origins are supposed to lie in a Saxon trick played on invading Danes, who accepted alcohol-drenched pancakes from local women who then stabbed them to death while they slept.

Ripon also has the distinction of triggering America's main pancake race, at Washington cathedral, which was launched after clergy saw a picture of the dean and chapter at Ripon running at full lick.

"Sadly, we've looked at things very carefully this year and decided that it can't take place," said the current dean, and race co-organiser, the Very Rev Keith Jukes. "The big reason is healthy and safety.

"Any organisation which runs an event like this has to go through a number of risk assessments. The insurance companies demand it and in the end you have to work out whether it's a risk you can take.

"There is also the whole issue of road closures which can be an expensive business."

Organisers will now concentrate on recruitment and slimmed-down bureaucracy for a possible revival of the race, whose contestants scamper along Kirkgate tossing pancakes as many times as possible to win points. But Bateman said: "Sadly, fewer people are volunteering these days, and it's because of the paperwork. It started off as well-meaning but has now gone overboard.